Seven Dreams (37 page)

‘
Don’t,’ he growled.

Serena ignored it
all. ‘Tey,’ she said slowly. ‘Egg, Iya. I’m going to need you.’ She
touched her brother once, lightly, on the forehead, and stood
up.

‘
Anything I can do...’ Teyo said wretchedly. His shock was
fading, leaving him vulnerable to a slew of unwelcome emotions.
Crippling guilt warred with sick despair, leaving him feeling weak
and nauseous. If he’d done something sooner — if he hadn’t
uselessly kept secrets — Fabian wouldn’t have died.

Serena smiled at
him, but it was an odd, distant smile without warmth. ‘It isn’t
your fault,’ she said, touching his arm.

How like her to
guess at his thoughts, and to take a moment to reassure him, even
at such a time. It should have comforted him, but it only deepened
his pain: she didn’t deserve this.

He opened his
mouth, but Serena placed a hand over it, silencing him. ‘Hush,’ she
said. ‘There’s no time. Get us out of here, Tey?’

Teyo nodded, and
glanced, painfully, down at Fabian’s sprawled corpse. ‘What
about—’

‘
Leave
him,’ said Serena, turning her back on her brother. ‘It doesn’t
matter.’

Teyo blanched at
that. ‘It doesn’t—’

‘
No,’
Serena interrupted. ‘We’re going to fix this.’

A feeling of
grave foreboding knotted in Teyo’s gut. ‘What are we—’

‘
I
need the keys,’ she said.

Teyo saw the
whole of her plan in an instant. It was probably impossible, but he
didn’t care; if she needed to try it, he could only support
her.

Egg and Iya
needed no prompting, either. ‘The keys are all taken,’ Egg pointed
out. ‘How can we get them back?’

‘
We
don’t need to,’ said Serena. ‘Once Ylona’s got all seven, what will
she do? She’ll go straight to the gate, and to the repository.
That’s where we’ll go.’

‘
Wait
just a minute,’ said Bron, slower to catch on. ‘You can’t go to the
repository. You can’t access such a dangerous technology just to
revive one man!’

Four pairs of
eyes turned upon him with identical expressions of furious
contempt. Bron stepped back a fraction, and held up his hands. ‘I’m
sorry for your loss, truly,’ he said, with a passable attempt at
sincerity. ‘But you must see that this is ridiculous. I can’t
possibly permit it.’

‘
And
who,’ said Serena, with dangerous calm, ‘appointed you leader of
this team?’

Bron bristled.
‘Damnit, if it comes to that, I did!’ he said, his voice rising. ‘I
seem to be the only sane person around here. It’s what my bosses
would expect.’

Serena turned her
back on him, and headed up the stairs. ‘I care nothing for your
bosses,’ she said.

Bron spat
something else, but what it was supposed to be no-one would ever
know. Before he had uttered more than two syllables, Teyo planted a
fist in his mouth. Bron dropped with a satisfying thud, and lay
inert.

Egg clapped him
on the back. ‘There might be something to this violence thing after
all,’ she observed.

‘
Shouldn’t we...?’ Iya said, gesturing helplessly at Bron’s
sprawled form.

‘
Leave
him,’ Serena called back. ‘He’s the greatest agent in all of the
Seven, after all! He can get himself out of this.’

‘
Serena, love,’ Teyo called to her retreating back. ‘Wait just
a moment.’

She turned, and
raised an enquiring brow at him. Her skin was horribly pale, but
she looked resolute and calm. Teyo felt proud of her.
‘Yes?’

Teyo smiled up at
her, and shifted. His legs and arms contracted, his back
lengthened; dark fur sprouted from every pore, and his teeth
transformed into horrific fangs. Where the man had stood moments
before there now stood a whurthag, one of the most fearsome beasts
living. The stuff of legends only a year or two before, the
whurthag had been recalled from its home in the Lower Realms and
unleashed upon the Middles to catastrophic effect. It was wholly
illegal to take the whurthag’s shape, of course; every realm of the
Seven had unanimously agreed upon that. Teyo didn’t care. His only
concern was to escort his team safely out of the Warren.

Iyamar grinned
and shifted. Seconds later, two whurthags stood, fur bristling, at
the bottom of the stairs.

You know you
could get into serious trouble for this?
Teyo
enquired.

Iyamar’s heavy
jaws dropped open in a canine grin.
Oh, noooo,
she replied.
Say it isn’t true!

Teyo snickered.
Very well, then. Off we go.
The two whurthags surged up the
stairs, barrelling past Serena, and headed into the upper corridors
at a run.
Try not to kill anyone,
Teyo added as an
afterthought.

Yessir!

Six hours later,
a vast, crimson-scaled draykon landed on the shores of a tiny,
uncharted island off the south-east coast of Nimdre and instantly
collapsed in exhaustion. A human passenger, miniaturised in
comparison with the draykon’s size, slithered down off the
recumbent beast’s back and folded to the ground.

A second, smaller
draykon landed beside the first, its scales dark amber. Another
human passenger descended, and for a few minutes all four members
of the unusual party lay inert and exhausted on the stony, pebbled
beach.

Then the crimson
draykon vanished, and Teyo returned to himself.

Draykoni,
he thought fuzzily,
really aren’t made for long-distance
flying.
He was lying with his face in the wet sand, but it took
him a while to realise it.

‘
Tey?’
said Serena. ‘Are you all right?’

‘
Mmpf,’ uttered Teyo. Every bone in his body felt like soup,
and he couldn’t stop trembling.

‘
I’m
sorry,’ Serena whispered, touching his hair. ‘I shouldn’t do this
to you.’

That was more
than enough. Teyo got his hands underneath himself and managed to
achieve a sitting position, albeit a shaky one. He smiled at
Serena, and shook his head. ‘It’s okay. I can do it.’

She nodded, but
doubtfully. ‘Iya?’

Iyamar had by
this time resumed her human shape. Her condition was no way near as
bad as Teyo’s, which mortified him. It took him a moment to
remember that she was twenty-six years his junior.

‘
I’m
fine,’ she said breezily, although she said it from a recumbent
posture. At least she had managed to land face up rather than face
down. She wasn’t shaking, either.

Egg was on her
feet and prowling around. ‘This place is rubbish,’ she pronounced
irrelevantly as she rejoined the group.

Teyo glanced
around, blinking. He hadn’t even bothered to look. The island was
truly tiny, so small he could clearly see the opposite coast. It
was largely featureless, nothing but bare rock fading to sand at
the edges. Its only discernible point of interest was a collection
of tall stones gathered at the centre, each one coloured a slightly
different shade of honey-brown.

‘
That’s where they’ll be,’ Serena said, following Teyo’s gaze.
‘Say when ready.’

‘
Ready!’ called Iyamar, bouncing up from the sand with
appalling energy.

‘
Ready,’ said Egg. She had picked up a dagger from somewhere
and had taken great pleasure in wielding it ever since. Teyo wasn’t
sure whether she knew how to use it, but probably she did. She just
hadn’t employed that particular ability in a while.

Teyo levered
himself to his feet, unable to suppress a groan. ‘Ready,’ he
croaked. Everything hurt, but he was rewarded with a warm smile of
gratitude from Serena, and he felt fractionally better.

‘
Let’s
go,’ she said, and strode away in the direction of the
stones.

Teyo hurried to
keep pace with her, alert for any signs of danger. There were none,
at least for a while; the island was bare of all life save for an
occasional winged creature soaring somewhere above, or settling
briefly upon the sands. He was braced for that to change as they
neared the standing stones, but the island remained shrouded in a
stillness he might have found peaceful, in different
circumstances.

At the heart of
the circle of stones there stood an archway of smooth rock,
unmarked and undecorated. This place had probably been the subject
of numerous archaeological pamphlets, Teyo thought, but he doubted
anyone had ever guessed at any part of the truth.

Serena walked
around the archway, inspecting it closely. ‘Aha,’ she said softly,
and beckoned.

Teyo joined her.
She was standing directly under the archway, looking up. Arrayed
around the inside of the smooth curve were seven alcoves, perfectly
sized and shaped to contain one small stone key.

All seven were in
place, each one pulsing with a soft light.

‘
She’s
already gone through,’ Serena murmured.

Teyo nodded. ‘It
might be too late.’

‘
I
know. We still have to try.’

Teyo had no
opposition to make, but he did have a question. How did they
use
the gate? Here it was, apparently active; all the keys
were present and doing
something,
and there was no sign of
Ylona, Halavere or any of their people. But despite all this,
nothing was happening.

Serena put out a
hand. The instant her fingertips touched the honey-brown stone of
the gate, she vanished.

‘
Oh,’
said Teyo, and stretched out a hand.

The world
dissolved.

If the repository
had been impressive as a vision, it was far more so in reality.
After a moment’s dark disorientation, Teyo’s eyes focused upon a
chamber so toweringly vast he could barely comprehend its
proportions. The ceiling soared up and up and up, leaving him
dwarfed and feeling wholly insignificant far below. Every inch of
the walls and much of the floor was fitted with shelves of all
conceivable shapes and sizes, containing everything from
traditional books to stacked, crystalline boxes and... well, Teyo
had no idea what half of the things were, except that they probably
stored information by some means or another.

All of this
passed through his thoughts in an instant. He had no more time to
muse on the contents of those boxes and books, or the mysteries and
secrets that might be resolved were he to explore even a single
shelf. The moment he became aware of his surroundings, a curious
scene revealed itself.

Ylona and
Halavere had indeed entered the repository ahead of them, for they
stood near the centre of the room, only a few feet away from Teyo.
They had brought two others with them, two men whom Teyo did not
recognise. All four were peculiarly still. After a moment, Teyo
realised they were frozen in place, for he detected not the
smallest movement from any of them. They did not even appear to be
breathing. They had stopped in the midst of talking, apparently all
at once, for their mouths were open and their faces alight with
expressions of eagerness (Halavere), wariness (the unfamiliar two),
and dismay (Ylona).

Standing not far
away was a fifth person, so still and quiet that Teyo didn’t notice
him at first.
He
was not frozen. He stood leaning against
one of the bookcases, his arms folded and his brows lowered. He
appeared to be deep in thought, so much so that he did not
immediately notice the entrance of Teyo’s party either. When he
did, his head turned slightly and he regarded the newcomers with a
blink of surprise.

The man looked to
be about Teyo’s own age, or a year or two older, though his hair
was white. His eyes were dark green and thoughtful, his skin
Darklander pale. He was dressed in a pair of loose trousers and a
soft blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His feet were
bare.

‘
Rhoun
Torinth,’ blurted Teyo.

The man nodded
once.

‘
Aren’t you supposed to be dead?’ said Iyamar, her tone
accusing.

‘
Hush,’ muttered Egg. ‘You can be so rude
sometimes.’

Teyo smothered a
sudden, surprising desire to laugh.
Egg
lecturing Iyamar on
manners? He loved his teammates so much sometimes, it made his
heart hurt.

Rhoun Torinth’s
brows shot up at Iya’s words, and he blinked. ‘Hmm. I don’t think I
will answer any questions on my state of health until I know the
identity of my... visitors.’ The language he spoke wasn’t quite
Nimdren, but it was close; he was matching the words of his
uninvited guests with the nearest dialect he knew. That realisation
intrigued Teyo. Was it a forerunner of the Nimdren tongue, whatever
he was speaking? He wished he could ask, but the moment was far
from appropriate.

Serena stepped
forward. ‘We’re here for a good reason,’ she offered. ‘We apologise
for the intrusion, but it’s very important. Besides, Iyamar’s
phrasing might have been a little abrupt but she raises a good
point: we didn’t expect to find anybody here.’ She paused, and
added with a smile, ‘Least of all you.’

Rhoun Torinth
considered her, unspeaking. ‘
Nimoruen
has developed a little
differently than I might have expected,’ he mused in a thoughtful
tone. ‘How did that come about, I wonder?’